This thesis describes investigations into memory function in surgical patients under anesthesia.
In a worst case scenario, sleep (hypnosis) is insufficiently induced and/or maintained
and the patient regains consciousness, is aware of surgery and possibly in pain. Such
an experience is often traumatic and may have devastating, long-term psychological consequences.
Ideally, anesthesia induces unconsciousness and recollection of intraoperative
events is lost. The latter scenario provided the research setting for this thesis, which specifically
addresses two questions:
1) Does memory function depend on hypnotic adequacy?
2) Does memory function depend on the type of information?
Outline
Studies were conducted in healthy, ambulatory patients scheduled for relatively short
elective surgical procedures under general anesthesia. In all cases, anesthesia was induced
and maintained with propofol, an intravenous anesthetic with favorable clinical and
pharmacodynamic properties for this type of patient and surgery. Novel psychological and
neurophysiological techniques were combined to assess memory function during two levels
of anesthesia: adequate hypnosis and deep sedation. Each level was examined in separate
studies, as was the effect of non-emotional and emotional information. Both the influence of
hypnotic state and type of information on memory function (2 x 2 factorial design) were
addressed, and four experiments were conducted.
The first chapter introduces behavioral studies of memory and emotion in general,
and during anesthesia in particular. Part one provides a background to memory assessment
and reviews recent technological developments in monitoring hypnotic state during
anesthes路la. Part two briefly reviews human and animal responses to emotional stimuli, and
describes the neurobiological basis of emotion. The chapters that follow report on the
experiments that were conducted to address the aims of this thesis. With the use of a
memory priming paradigm with relatively familiar Dutch words, chapters 2 and 3 describe
investigations into memory function during adequate hypnosis and deep sedation,
respectively. In chapter 3, individual differences in memory function are addressed as well.
Chapter 4 highlights patient awareness that was observed during deep sedation from a
phenomenological and neurophysiological point of view, and describes its relation to postoperative
conscious recall. Chapter 5 investigates processing of emotional information and
its effect on memory function during adequate hypnosis. A similar paradigm is adhered to
during deep sedation, which is reported on in chapter 6. In chapter 7, finally, the main
findings and conclusions of the studies presented in this thesis are discussed